I am somewhat new to collaborating globally through the web. I am interested in learning more and am currently taking a class in global collaboration. I am a World Language teacher and would like to get started very quickly on some projects. I had a few questions that I was hoping that some people could answer for me. Here they are:
1. How did you decide on a project to collaborate on?
2. Did you create your own project or did you choose one on a site to join?
3. Did the classroom you collaborated with speak a different language?
4. How difficult was it to contact the other teacher?
5. Did the other teacher get back to you quickly?
6. What problems did you encounter?
7. Were the problems more related to the project itself, the technology or other things?
8. How long did the project take?
9. Did it take longer than expected, shorter than expected or exactly how much time you expected?
10. What types of things did your students learn from the experience, other than classroom content?
11. Did you have to create email accounts for each student?
12. What steps did you take to make sure you students were “safe” when talking to other people?
13. What were your expectations for your students and the people they were collaborating with?
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We personally have found that quite a number of the teachers and their students that we have collaborated with do form bonds and in some cases we have developed long term friendships with them, some now for over 5 years.
The Italian school and two of the teachers that we collaborate with and whom we visited while we were in Italy on holiday this year seem to have huge support from their education department, and are sponsored by it now that they have become an International school as a result of such exchanges and have attended conferences in Finland, South America, South Korea, and have just spent 3 weeks in Australia all resulting initially from these types of world email and video links. And have also had numerous exchange visits to their school from groups from around the World.
Speaking to them on Skype last week they tell me they are coming over to the UK (Cambridge Uni) as a result of a link with a teacher there at Easter, so we hope we will be able to link up with them while they are here.
We have become close friends with a teacher from Wisconsin and met up with her and her family last year while they were visiting London on holiday, this resulted in her returning for BETTs show in this January which is the biggest Education, Teaching and Training show in the World and held at the London Olympia. I also arrange for her to visit to a local school before returning with lots of technology and ideas for her school.
A number of the overseas students that we have helped with their various projects as well stay in touch with us and tell us about the friends of their age group they have made and correspond and exchange information with around the World by email and on Skype.
At Christmas some very kind thank cards and a PowerPoint show from a group of French students I had been helping with information and photos from the UK for their final examination project submission. (The effect of binge drinking on the UK’s young society)
So I think I you would agree there is much benefit to be had in such contacts for all concerned, and although Epals and Skype links does not always produce results, when it does, they can be long lasting and certainly a benefit educationally even at my age.
If you have a Smart Board, an air keyboard can be a big help.
Have you seen the wireless microphone which is also a small recorder youngsters can interview staff or each other, then plug into USB and download the interview direct onto a PC.
I think every one has seen the mobile phone size Flash video cameras of various types, capacity and costs, for schools.
Regards
John F
1. How did you decide on a project to collaborate on?
Go to www.epals.com and click on the word "Projects" on the home page. You will see a variety of projects there. The most popular is "The Way We Are." The newest one, which is also very popular, is "Digital Storytelling." Several of the projects have a science focus, and some of those are used by ELL teachers outside the US/Canada to help their students learn scientific vocabulary in English, along with just practicing their English.
2. Did you create your own project or did you choose one on a site to join?
You can use any of the ePals projects at no charge. Or you can go to the Teacher Forums and see what projects other people might propose, or propose one of your own creation. The "featured teacher" on ePals right now designed a Kites project on his own and is finding partner classrooms through ePals.
3. Did the classroom you collaborated with speak a different language?
ePals translates to 35 languages. The more common languages such as Chinese, Korean, Russian that have specialized letters do NOT require you to download any new character sets.
4. How difficult was it to contact the other teacher?
You must have your own profile approved in the ePals Global Community before you can click the "Contact" button. If you are in the community, you click "Contact" and an email is automatically addressed to that teacher. It may take her a week to respond to you if she is in a school with few computers (third world school).
5. Did the other teacher get back to you quickly?
You have to remember that southern hemisphere is on a different schedule than US schools. Australia had to start the fall semester by Feb. 4. Chile had to start the fall semester by March 4. Some schools in South America will not go back until after Easter. So if you are trying to contact a teacher who is out on "summer vacation" in January in New Zealand or South Africa, you may not hear back quickly.
6. What problems did you encounter? Answers vary. Recent earthquakes in Chile and Haiti closed schools. The tsuanmi in Sri Lanka washed away school buildings. Hurricanes in Florida and Louisiana flooded or leveled communities. Rioting in the streets just before the presidential election closed schools in Kenya. You need to be sure you know what current events might impede your teacher or her students from responding.
7. Were the problems more related to the project itself, the technology or other things? Depends
8. How long did the project take?
You can set the length of the project. The ePals projects are typically an exchange of five emails over a period of 5-10 weeks.Teachers who do "The Way We Are" report that students ask to continue the collaboration when that unit is ended and propose ways to do so. (What great 21st century skills they display!)
9. Did it take longer than expected, shorter than expected or exactly how much time you expected? (depends)
10. What types of things did your students learn from the experience, other than classroom content?
There's a huge amount of cultural knowledge, vocabulary, how we are alike and how we are different. In science projects, everyone else in the world uses metric system, which adds to supporting the science teacher focusing on using metric measures. Even with other students who speak English, vocabulary will be different in different parts of the English-speaking world! ("confection" in UK = candy in US)
11. Did you have to create email accounts for each student?
You can create free, safe and protected student email, ePals SchoolMail. This was designed for K12 student use (unlike Google or other email systems). Also, ePals has TRUSTe certification of child privacy, something that you see on sites like Amazon or eBay but not on many education sites, because it's a lot of work to observe this independent standard. (That's why the district IT security people love ePals and don't want to let in other web 2.0 tools...there a some serious security issues if a site does not have TRUSTe certification.)
12. What steps did you take to make sure your students were “safe” when talking to other people?
ePals has teacher monitoring of student email as well as "dirty word" filters.
ePals screens the people who try to join the Global Community. Each day about 10% of the people are rejected because they have no good reason to be interacting with kids online. Real people screen the applications and check to see if teachers in fact work at the schools they say they work in.
ePals also allows the teacher to set the "walls" of their world. Students can email to: their class only, their school or district only, anyone with a SchoolMail account, anyone in the Global Community (16+ million users), or even anyone on the internet. If you have students writing to a scientist or an author you can still preview what the students write and what is written to them in return.
13. What were your expectations for your students and the people they were collaborating with?
Start with the end in mind!
Tell the students they must use proper spelling, punctuation and wording (no IM or text messaging) and that they are representing the school, the community, and their country in their words. You will be amazed at how much more interested students are in writing for a peer somewhere else than for you the teacher right here. But that means they are writing more and caring more about their work, too.
** You didn't ask, but I thought I would mention that world language teachers are those most likely to have long-term collaborative relationships with other teachers. If you teach Spanish and you find a teacher in Mexico with students who are willing to correspond with your students, you have a powerful partner. I suggest that you get a used copy of your textbook (from Amazon or half.com) and mail it to the partner teacher. Then you can say, "In March we are studying chapters 20 and 21, so what activities might we have our students work on together?" When your students study the chapter on "my home" and learn the words for bed, bedroom, table, living room, sofa, etc., you probably have them write a descriptive paragraph about their own home. With ePals, you could have them write that and send to a partner, who writes back with information about their own home. This gives great language practice and real cultural knowledge too. You could exchange podcasts, have the students learn songs (Alla en el rancho grande, etc) and share pictures of what they eat for lunch, etc. There are lots of powerful ways to increase learning through real exchanges. Typically when two teachers "click" like this, they are paired for years. I know of a couple of them who are now finishing their 8th or 9th year of working together in ePals!
My best advice would be to choose a collaborative partner who is quick to communicate via email. If you have to struggle to get an answer, it would be hard to rely on that person to follow through the entire project (in my opinion).
CAPSpace is a great place to start looking for collaborative project partners and project ideas (you can also post projects there for classes to do with you). There are lots of world language teachers doing collaborative video conference projects, so they would probably also be interested in other types of collaboration as well: http://projects.twice.cc/
Here's a blog post I wrote about some other stuff to think about when you are doing collaborative projects of any kind with another teacher: http://thedistanceblog.blogspot.com/2009/11/pre-planning-collaborat...
Hope this helps!
:-)
I was contacted by the teacher who organized it through our computer providers.
2. Did you create your own project or did you choose one on a site to join?
She already had an idea which she shared with me, I loved it
3. Did the classroom you collaborated with speak a different language?
we are all united by english as a common language but some school only have a few english language speakers.
4. How difficult was it to contact the other teacher?
Very easy, this part is crucial, I'd participated in other efforts before but they failed because of poor follow-up
5. Did the other teacher get back to you quickly?
Absolutely
6. What problems did you encounter?
some technical difficulties but we worked them through, mostly we've learned a lot from each other.
7. Were the problems more related to the project itself, the technology or other things?
having done it now for 4 years, it is hard to keep the momentum going, but I get excited every time we start a new project, for the kids it is always a new experience.
8. How long did the project take? our projects take one semester more or less
9. Did it take longer than expected, shorter than expected or exactly how much time you expected? We plan it from beginning to end, this is also very important.
10. What types of things did your students learn from the experience, other than classroom content?
Understanding cultural differences, viewing different realities, developing interest for international news, lots of technology skills, always have a plan B, things go wrong sometimes THINK FAST!
11. Did you have to create email accounts for each student? our students mostly communicate through us but they use their school emails in our projects.
12. What steps did you take to make sure you students were “safe” when talking to other people? all the participating schools are approved by the organizer, we avoid posting personal information. (identifying our student) But we do post art work, written work, videos, music etc.
13. What were your expectations for your students and the people they were collaborating with? I expect my students to show respect and to learn from others, usually we are amazed at what our partner schools ideas, initiatives, projects, etc
Hope this helps!
Cheers
Gaby